Connecting Fiat and Crypto: Using T-Bills to Build a Safer, 24/7, Yield-Bearing Settlement Network

Wall Street and Web3 veterans at Jiko explain how CFOs and treasurers operating in the digital assets space can best navigate between fiat and digital currencies

Fiat currency has been around for 800 years and has been the default for the past 50-plus. It has served us well and continues to.

Cryptocurrency has, since 2008, proven to be a viable alternative with a litany of use cases. Its potential is limitless.

They both work. The problem is, they don’t always work well together. Toggling between the two reveals structural problems for crypto institutions that cause delays and impose quantitative limits.

This situation is bound to degrade further as demand for crypto increases, which it will, as institutions exercise their new regulatory approval to hold digital assets.

Jiko, a modern banking and instant settlement platform that straddles the fiat and crypto spheres, has found what might be the optimal path to safe, real-time settlement. The platform uses U.S. Treasury bills to ensure stability, safety, and liquidity. The assets are held in clients’ names, earning yield and available 24/7, supported by a bank with zero leverage, offering the ultimate safeguard against a 2008-style scenario.

5 key challenges

1. Counterparty and Balance Sheet Risk
2. Yield and Opportunity Cost
3. Compliance and Regulatory Hurdles
4. Operational Friction
5. Liquidity and Capital Efficiency

There is no single reason for excess friction when trading between fiat and crypto. The baton gets dropped at least five times in the relay.

While there are robust API standards for conversions within each of those two realms, such is not the case when converting between them. While fiat-to-crypto-and-back APIs exist, they do not scale well. They didn’t need to until now, but as funds trade more in crypto, these interfaces will require major upgrades.

The tech issue cascades into an economic issue. Because of the inefficiencies, the cost per transaction can be high. The unfavorable fee structure erodes yields, making exchanges of value between fiat- and crypto-denominated accounts less desirable for investors.

Of course, legacy investors have other reasons for eschewing the crypto world. The modern era of international currency exchange dates back to 1880, and 145 years is plenty of time to work out the kinks in the onboarding and customer service processes. The challenge now lies in how banks evaluate and serve crypto institutions in navigating evolving risk frameworks, compliance expectations, and operational scrutiny that were never designed for digital asset businesses.

Many of the challenges stem from the growing pains of connecting a decentralized ecosystem with highly regulated financial institutions. Onboarding friction, compliance verification, and counterparty risk controls all become more complex when funds move between two systems governed by very different rules and timeframes.

Ultimately, one of the biggest disconnects between fiat and crypto is balance sheet concentration risk. Because banks must manage capital ratios and withdrawal limits, they cannot always accommodate the high and sporadic volumes typical of crypto markets. The result is mutual exposure: liquidity strain for crypto participants and balance sheet volatility for their banking partners.

The solution

Jiko developed JikoNet, a high-volume, ‘round-the-clock, settlement network that facilitates U.S. dollar transactions in real-time. By underpinning these settlements via ultra-short-term U.S. T-bills, JikoNet eliminates balance sheet exposure and reduces counterparty risk, all while ensuring safety and generating yield.

Extending from this is JikoNet Crypto, a dedicated subnetwork for digital asset institutions that brings regulated banking rails and settlement in dollars to the crypto industry.

Jiko’s most notable innovation is Jiko Pockets: digital wallets that combine the transactional ease of a bank account with automated, agent-driven investments in T-bills. Jiko Pockets enable institutional investors to keep funds continuously invested, free from counterparty risk, and instantly accessible.

“What we’ve built with JikoNet is a fundamentally safer foundation for real-time money movement,” said Jiko CEO Stephane Lintner. “Every transaction is backed by direct ownership of U.S. Treasury bills, aligning liquidity, safety, and yield without tradeoffs. For the first time, institutions can move dollars around the clock with complete confidence in their value.”

When a transaction is initiated, the sender’s T-bills are liquidated against Jiko’s trading desk, and the proceeds are swept into the sender’s account at Jiko Bank. The bank then books a ledger transfer between the sender’s Pocket and the receiver’s. Finally, the funds hit the receiver’s Jiko Bank account, and the cash is swept into the receiver’s brokerage account, where it is immediately invested in T-bills. This means funds never sit idle or unprotected. Each transfer converts instantly between cash and T-bills, preserving yield while eliminating exposure to intermediaries.

Direct, immediate benefits

There is no reason why fiat and crypto instruments should not work together, even though they have not historically.

JikoNet Crypto demonstrates that an innovative project can bridge the gap between these two spaces. Crypto teams that want their assets to be widely held will adapt to regulatory expectations, and as they do, they will become safer investments for funds and other institutions. As the ownership pool gets broader, liquidity is bound to get deeper.

As technology advancements ease integration, the costs to trade between fiat and crypto are likely to decline, mirroring trends in the legacy brokerage world. (Some people reading this are old enough to remember $7 flat fees for a standard stock trade; others are young enough to wonder why anyone would ever pay any fee for that.) As those costs decline, investors would benefit from higher net yields.

While onboarding and customer service remain growing pains for the crypto industry, perhaps closer alignment with longstanding financial institutions will provide some guidance.

“Jiko brings together the trust of the traditional financial system with the agility of modern technology,” says Breanne Madigan, Jiko’s head of digital assets. “Our leadership’s experience at Goldman Sachs and other leading institutions ensures institutional rigor, while our technology team delivers the speed and innovation digital markets demand. The result is what investors have been asking for — safe, yield-bearing, regulated, and available 24/7 for fiat-to-crypto liquidity.”

The way forward

Jiko is not focused entirely on crypto, and that is one of the reasons why crypto firms could benefit from partnering with it. Lintner assembled a team with both Wall Street and fintech provenance in order to bring these benefits to mainstream corporate treasury operations. This is exactly the kind of maturation that more incisive crypto leaders seek.

While corporate treasurers are far more risk-averse than crypto DAOs, they do not always act in their own stated best interests. Earlier this year, Jiko commissioned the Corporate Cash Confidence Survey, which found that while T-bills are regarded as the “risk-free” benchmark, businesses have not taken full advantage of them, citing operational complexity.

If Jiko is removing that barrier, though, does it not make sense for crypto teams to use this as an opportunity to leapfrog their risk management efforts ahead of mainstream companies?

For more information on JikoNet Crypto or to request a demo, visit jiko.com/jikonet-crypto.